Title: Numbers
Author: freak-pudding
Disclaimer: The West Wing and all associated articles are the sole property of Aaron Sorkin and NBC. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Toby paces. AU Post-ITSOTG
Author's Notes: For the WW-Challenge community on LJ. Inspired by strange trivia. Hebrew custom dictates that someone has to stay with the body of a dead person until the funeral.
He just couldn't say no to her, and he thinks he'll suffocate before anyone comes to get him.
The President's eulogy is five thousand, seven hundred, and forty-two words long, and the words "harsh", "tragic", and "young" appear in it a total of two hundred and ninety-three times.
Toby dabs at his sweat-beaded forehead with a grey handkerchief and continues his rounds of the little parlor.
It's just that he couldn't bear to do this to Sam.
It was hard enough watching the news break across his face, seeing the tears pale his youthful face, the pain crease premature age into the corners of his eyes. And all Toby can see is the way he turned away from them all, cold and dark and hands covering his face, arms shaking and voice tremulous.
"We didn't call her," he'd say later, shaken and deranged and possibly on heavy tranquilizers. "Why didn't we think of calling her?"
"I don't know," would be all Toby could reply.
He hears the creak of floorboards outside, and his heart leaps with hope, but then he glances at the casket, remembers, regrets, and resumes pacing.
It takes eleven paces to go from the broken radiator to the window. There are three hundred and sixty-five steps in front of the Capital. Only one in two billion live to be one hundred and sixteen.
He stops pacing in front of the window, puts his hands on the sill and leans his tired head against the glass. Finger squeeze and contract, squeeze and contract.
This window will not open, a post-it pasted to the glass tells him.
Toby pulls it off, on a whim, crumples and stuffs it into his pocket. He turns away from the window, away from the sunshine and warmth and bright blue sky. Mikhailov had three hundred and fifty-six pseudonyms.
"Toby."
CJ knocks once on the door; Toby wipes the sweat from his brow once more.
"Yeah."
"It's time."
"Yeah."
She steps back from the doorway, ready to usher him out, and Toby gives one last look around the empty room. Broken window, broken radiator, folding chair, casket. He remembers the tears in Donna's eyes, like clouds at the edge of a hazy summer horizon, when he told her.
"Hang on," he tells CJ, and turns back into the room. He feels the whisper of wind as she passes, walking away.
He crosses the room, places his hand against the smooth, polished wood of a casket carrying the man that could be his brother. Right-handed people live longer than left-handed people.
Toby leans close, lets his lips right beside the seam. He wants to apologize, to laugh, to tell a joke or share a memory. He wants to sob and say he should've been looking, should've gone faster, should've seen him leave the group.
"I love you, Josh," he whispers. "I'm sorry."
A hurricane releases more energy in ten minutes than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
Toby stands carefully and turns around. Seventy-four billion people have been born and have died in the last five hundred years.
Slowly, he walks away.